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'Now we should all acknowledge our Holocaust guilt.' Denmark and the Holocaust as European Identity
Author(s): Bechmann, Sune
Date: 2008
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Jewish Museums
Abstract: The subject for this paper is the role of the Holocaust in contemporary European politics of identity. The Council of Europe and the European Parliament have recently adopted resolutions about the Holocaust and most European states are now member of the Holocaust Task Force. In international relations the acknowledgment of the nation’s role in the history of the Holocaust has become increasingly important and several academics have suggested that the Holocaust should and will compose the cornerstone identity marker for a future common European identity. The contemporary institutional practices and institutions promoting the idea of the Holocaust as a uniting factor to the European peoples are analysed in the paper with Denmark as a case. The three subjects of scrutiny are the Danish Jewish Museum, the Auschwitz Remembrance Day and the teaching of Holocaust history in the Danish education system. In addition, political and academic discourse is also studied. The paper concludes that there is currently no influential Danish promulgator of the idea that the Holocaust composes a common European experience that unites the individual Europeans.